Slowly But Surely

I have a love hate relationship with running. I love the idea of being a runner. I want to be able to tell people I'm a runner. I just hate the fact that I'm SLOW and this some how discredits all my efforts. This love hate relationship developed sometime during my cross-country and track days of high school. I have fond memories of cross-country training with Carmen running around Windansea and La Jolla Shores and sometimes jumping in the ocean. Less fond memories of running track. I was the slowest, running a 9min mile, therefore, got stuck running the 2 miler - to this day, I still don't understand the logic! Psychoanalyzing the situation, this is probably where my shame of being slow began. Nowadays, I would only wish to run 9min miles.

Fast forward to law school. I began running again and training for the Chicago marathon. Again, I was the slowest in my group running a 10min mile but I had a coach who would run with me and encourage me so I began to really enjoy myself. I think I have a tendency to talk about things in excess when I'm a little obsessed ... these days it's Bikram and I'm sure many of my Parisian friends are quite sick of me encouraging Bikram on them. Back in law school, I guess it was running, as I have quite a few friends who have run multiple marathons and thank me for being their motivation. Umm, by the way, I never made it to Chicago on October 13, 2002 to run the marathon. The most I ever ran during that training season was 18 miles. Basically, while packing my boxes to leave Boston and move to Florida I fell off my ladder (back in those days I use to have to climb a ladder to get to my bed) so I was injured and then really just couldn't motivate to run those 20+ miles in the treaded heat and humidity of Florida. My running days were over ... at least for the moment.

Then in 2008, I decided I needed to start running again. I joined TNT in Boston with Tara and we did the Maine half-marathon. I was worried about raising the money but that ended up being the easy part. I won't bore you with the details but this ended up being a horrible experience for me and after the half I didn't run anymore. But as always, I still have that burning desire to run a marathon one day and to be able to say I'm a runner and not be a phony. Last year, I said I would start running once I moved to Paris. I even made a deal with Jenna that we would run the Paris marathon together. Jenna an experienced marathoner was willing to run at my pace just for the fun of traveling to Paris. Ahh, I developed an addiction for Bikram instead.

This long drawn out running history brings me to this summer, I convinced Heather (my amazing sister-in-law) to join a running group in Montreal with me. Her friend Kelly described me as the sister-in-law from hell subjecting her to such torture but Heather pleasantly disagreed :) No, I don’t have her brainwashed! I ran a handful of times in Montreal, once in NY, once in Winthrop, once in Boston, once in Maine, and twice in Florida. Not too shabby for someone who hasn’t run in about three years. Heather and Alex, my Floridian running buddy/cheerleader, are greatly missed here in Paris … only if I could have brought one of them back with me. My last run of the summer was with Alex on an early humid Sunday morning sometime in mid-August. That is until yesterday!

Here in Paris, my friend Kay is part of a running a group where I think the slowest person is about a 9/10min mile. I have been a little hesitant of joining Kay’s group for all of the above-mentioned reasons. I'm even slower than my law school days, about a 12min mile these days. Yesterday, I decided to meet the group for their track practice at Stade Emile Anthoine ... this way I can avoid public humiliation. How many people could actually be at the track? Ugh! Yeah, I was wrong! Football (soccer) practice, track practice, and some avid runners were all on the track/field. Oh well, too late to turn around. I participated in the speed training and abs workout and the two people who lapped me … he he he… were super encouraging :)

It was a beautiful night and the stadium is right next to La Tour Eiffel so when the night fell and the sparkling lights of La Tour Eiffel turned on I thought to myself - life is good. I'm back! This morning I signed up for the Les Foulées Villenogarennoises 10K on Nov. 6th. And as an extra bonus, I figure this blog about my running may also be another motivator not to give up :)

I found the picture below from a google search. For users of Picasso your photos can be access by the public hence me :) This photo is from someone’s Parisian vacation … It's not the best photo but I figured nobody wanted to see the one with the strange old lady.

Stade Emile Anthoine